1. Communication Disorders
Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Communication Disorders
Exceptional Lives: Special Education in Today’s Schools (4th ed.)
These are the instructional goals presented in the Student Study Guide and the Instructor’s Manual - don’t forget that you can introduce the chapter by accessing the audio clips of the authors on the companion website. These audio clips provide an overview and focus the student to understand the importance of the information they are preparing to learn.
Chapter 14

2. How Do You Recognize Students with Communication Disorders?
Defining Communication Disorders
How Do You Recognize Students with Communication Disorders?
Communication entails receiving, understanding, and expressing information, feelings, and ideas.
Communication and language include both the content and the medium used.
Speech and language disorders (often associated with other disorders)
Speech disorder refers to difficulty in producing sounds (cleft palate).
Language disorder refers to difficulty in receiving, understanding, and formulating ideas and information.
Cultural diversity
Difference does not always mean disorder.
Dialects are various forms of language.
Introduce Box 14.1 so that students understand how cultural diversity may impact communication. To offer an illustration of these language differences, students may want to review Box 14.2 and consider Rhonda Friedlander. Be attentive to the key portions of the definition - explanation of the challenges related to speech and its educational impact should be focused on. ?

3. How Do You Recognize Students with Communication Disorders?
Describing the Characteristics
Typical speech development
Follows a typical and predictable pattern and time table
By the age of 8, children can produce nearly all the consonants and vowels that make up the native language.
There is variation among children in the time of acquisition.
Speech disorders
Articulation: production of individual or sequenced sounds
Substitutions, omissions, additions, and distortions
If these problems interfere with peer interactions or educational performance: REFER
Apraxia of speech: motor speech disorder affecting the planning of speech
Difficulty with the voluntary, purposeful movement of speech (stroke, tumor, head injury, developmental)
Can produce individual sounds but cannot produce them in longer words or sentences
Voice disorders: pitch, duration, intensity, resonance, and vocal quality
Fluency disorders: interruptions in the flow of speaking
Stuttering: frequent repetition and/or prolongation of words or sounds
Typical Speech - Speech development can and often is effective without direct intervention on the part of educators. Instead, by the age of eight they have learned all the consonants and vowels that make up their family’s native language.
Speech Disorders - Speech disorders include disorders of articulation, voice, and fluency (rate and rhythm of speech). These disorders can occur alone, in combination with each other, or in conjunction with other disorders (see previous chapters 4, 8, 10, etc.). Next, review the most common types of speech disorders starting with articulation and continuing with the other disorders listed above. Like learning disabilities, these characteristics have similarities and yet, the needs for one individual may be quite different then for another with a different speech disorder. ?

4. How Do You Recognize Students with Communication Disorders?
Describing the Characteristics
Typical language development
Language development is complex
Depends on biological preparation, successful nurturance, sensorimotor experiences, and linguistic experiences
Five components of language
Phonology: the use of sounds to make meaningful syllables and words
Phonemes: individual speech sounds
Morphology: the structure of words
Morphemes: the smallest meaningful unit of speech (e.g., s)
Syntax: the rules for putting together a series of words to form sentences
Semantics: word and sentence meanings for what is spoken
Pragmatics: social use of language
Direct students to Figure 14-3 on p in the text for an outline of typical language development.
Typical language Development - Earlier, we mentioned the ease of development and what can be accomplished or often is by the age of eight. However, language is complex. Babies and youngsters can begin development within days of birth. It is important then that they are exposed to language and the five components from an early age: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. ?

5. How Do You Recognize Students with Communication Disorders?
Describing the Characteristics
Characteristics of language impairments
Language disorders may be receptive, expressive, or both.
Language disorders may be related to another disability or may be a specific language impairment.
Phonological disorders – difficulty in discriminating differences in speech sounds or sound segments
Morphological difficulties – problem using the structure of words to get or give information (e.g., proper tenses)
Syntactical errors – problem with the correct word order in sentences that meaning is lost for listeners
Semantic disorders – problems using words singly or together in sentences
Pragmatic disorders – problems in the social use of language (e.g., eye contact, body language, organization)
Introduce Elizabeth Smith and her son George from Box 14-3 on page 411 in the text and the implications related to this disorder and speech. In the description of Fred, what characteristics of language impairments to they see? ?

6. How Do You Recognize Students with Communication Disorders?
Identifying the Causes and Prevalence
Two types of speech and language disorders
Organic: caused by an identifiable problem in the neuromuscular mechanism of the person (hereditary malformations, prenatal injuries, toxic disturbances, tumors, traumas, seizures, infectious diseases, muscular diseases)
Functional: those with no identifiable origin
Speech and language disorders can also be classified according to when the disorder began.
Congenital: present at birth
Acquired: occurs well after birth
While introducing the two topical causes of Communication Disorders have the students consider the differences between the two and whether understanding and being able to identify either would have an instructional or therapeutic relationship for the individual and the related service provider?
Discussion questions:
How do congenital causes impact speech as compared to a functional disorder?
Would speech interventions differ based on the specific cause? If yes, please consider the issues related to the different interventions. ?

7. How Do You Evaluate Students with Communication Disorders?
Determining the Presence
How Do You Evaluate Students with Communication Disorders?
Speech assessment: speech pathologist uses a standardized articulation test to measure articulation, voice, and fluency problems.
Voice evaluations: includes both quantitative and qualitative measures (interviews and case history)
Fluency assessments: evaluated through a conversation with the student and interview with parents
Three areas to be assessed relative to language interactions in the classroom:
The student’s ability to use language effectively by speaking and listening tasks
The teacher’s language
The language requirements of the lessons and textbooks
Assessments for students who are bilingual or multilingual
Evaluation teams need to take a holistic view of the student’s communication skills using ecological assessments.
A step-by-step analysis of components in a speech-language assessment and many of the different concerns involved can be read at
This is a good introduction to assessment, both for teachers and parents. ?

8. How Do You Evaluate Students with Communication Disorders?
Determining the Presence
Figure 14-4
Point out how the steps of observation, screening, prereferral, referral, and nondiscriminatory evaluation take place in the evaluation of students who have an emotional or behavioral disturbance. ?

9. How Do You Assure Progress in the General Curriculum?
Including Students
Figure 14-5
Question for discussion on the continuum of services:
Why would schools need to provide resource rooms if they are including students in the regular education environment?
More importantly, where should related services be applied for a child with a communication disorder?
Question for discussion on nonacademic inclusion:
How should schools plan for and facilitate to nonacademic inclusion of students with special needs?
Specifically, how can we create environments where students have the opportunity to practice speech and the related social and emotional components that are involved with communication disorders?
Describe how students with communication disorders are supported in the general education curriculum.

10. How Do You Assure Progress in the General Curriculum?
Planning Universally Designed Learning
Adapting Instruction
Ask varied types of questions to encourage students’ self-expression
Expand student utterances by using modeling more elaborate language
Augment or alter classroom language by providing statements that explain a student’s nonverbal behaviors
Allow students opportunity to practice public verbalizations
Keep in mind the need of some students for AAC systems
Figure 14-6 (page 417)
Augmenting Instruction
Repetition of the curriculum
Visual supports: graphic organizers, photographs, gestures, sign language
Direct instruction in social skills
Directing the discussion towards instruction, discuss two strategies identified in the text.
How do we address critical social and emotional issues that could develop with or as a cause of limited ability to communicate and interact with peers.
How is this organized within the context of academic needs?
Questions for discussion:
How useful do you think student expression (and the need to learn this) would be in the classroom?
How would developing the student’s ability to express him or herself further include them in the general education classroom?
In what way have you seen or experienced any of theses strategies being used in the classroom context?
What other individuals with disabilities can the modifications listed above benefit?
Reflect on how communication disorders can be accommodated in the general curriculum.

11. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
ACC systems are an integrated group of components that supplement the communication abilities of individuals who cannot meet their communication needs through gestures, speaking, and/or writing.
An AAC device is a physical object that transmits or receives messages.
Types of AAC: communication books, communication boards, communication charts, mechanical/electrical voice output, computers, etc.
Using the AAC devices:
Using eyes to look at the symbol
Touching the symbols with fingers
Using a laser beam attached to the head
Scanning
Encoding